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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Eagleton argues that the criteria for what counted as literature in the eighteenth-century was what?
(a) Religious.
(b) Practical.
(c) Canonical.
(d) Ideological.

2. According to the Russian formalist Osip Brik, Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" would have been written if Pushkin had what?
(a) Died young.
(b) Been uneducated.
(c) Married early.
(d) Not lived.

3. What is the name of the economist Eagleton discusses in his preface?
(a) Gordon Tuck.
(b) J. M. Keynes.
(c) I. Fischer.
(d) Adam Smith.

4. Who wrote "What is Literature" on literary reception and was published in 1948?
(a) Roland Barthes.
(b) Wolfgang Iser.
(c) Stanley Fish.
(d) Jean Paul Sartre.

5. How did the Romantic artist reflect her or his work in its detachment from history itself?
(a) Because she or he was seen as a minor commodity who existed on the margins of society.
(b) Because she or he was seen as a producer of commodities who sold their goods for high pay.
(c) Because she or he was seen as a consumer of commodities who bought their goods for low pay.
(d) Because she or he was seen as a major commodity who existed within society.

6. Eagleton provides the analogy of finding a "scrap of writing from a long-vanished civilization" to make what point about deciphering its meaning?
(a) That we would be able to learn that it was a piece of poetry by looking at the language.
(b) That we would be able to tell that it was a piece of poetry regardless of access to its language.
(c) That we would be able to see that poetry didn't exist by looking at its language.
(d) That we would not know whether it was a piece of poetry or ordinary language.

7. What role does reception theory examine?
(a) The author's role.
(b) The critic's role.
(c) The reader's role.
(d) The teacher's role.

8. What proposes a "severe problem" for Husserl's theory?
(a) Truth.
(b) Consciousness.
(c) Individuality.
(d) Language.

9. For Eagleton, opposition between "historical" and "artistic" truth does NOT apply to what?
(a) Middle English.
(b) Late Victorian novels.
(c) Early Icelandic sagas.
(d) Fairy-tales.

10. According to Eagleton, what is ironic about those who complain of the difficulty of literary theory?
(a) "That those who complain are often uncivilised and uneducated."
(b) "That those who complain would not expect to understand a textbook of biology or chemical engineering."
(c) "That those who complain would expect to understand a textbook of biology or chemical engineering."
(d) "That those who complain are often civilised and educated."

11. According to Eagleton, "theory was a way of _______ literary works from the ________of civilised sensibility'"
(a) Emancipating; stranglehold.
(b) Studying; truth.
(c) Dismissing; idea.
(d) Excluding; oppression.

12. How do linguists describe the effect of language where "the texture, rhythm and resonance of words are in excess of their abstractable meaning."
(a) "A disproportion between one signifier for every other signified."
(b) "A disproportion between two signifiers."
(c) "A disproportion between two signifieds."
(d) "A disproportion between signifiers and signifieds."

13. According to Eagleton, what becomes the "panacea for all problems" as part of the romantics' aesthetic theory at the turn of the eighteenth century?
(a) The word.
(b) The symbol.
(c) The text.
(d) The image.

14. According to Eagleton, the formalists were not out to define literature but they were out to define what?
(a) Inventiveness.
(b) Literariness.
(c) Criticism.
(d) Realism.

15. What word does Eagleton discuss that is both a descriptive term to mean "literally untrue" as well as an evaluative term to mean "visionary" or "inventive"?
(a) Imaginative.
(b) Unimaginative.
(c) Unrealistic.
(d) Idealistic.

Short Answer Questions

1. During the 1960s, what kind of students began to enter higher education that broke down assumptions about literary studies?

2. According to Eagleton, what happens when literary theory becomes "turgidly unreadable"?

3. According to Eagleton, Stanley Fish's model excludes the possibility that there is a ______ of interpretations?

4. According to Eagleton, formalism is the application of what to the study of literature?

5. What novel by John Updike does Eagleton discuss from the position of reception theory?

(see the answer keys)

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